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Man Aiding G.O.P. Voter Registration Drive Is Charged

A Republican Party effort to register voters in advance of next month’s presidential election became the focal point of new controversy Friday when the authorities in Virginia charged a voter registration supervisor who had allegedly thrown eight completed voter registration forms into a recycling bin.

The sheriff’s office in Harrisonburg, Va., said the supervisor, Colin Small, had been charged with 13 counts of destruction of voter registration applications, disclosure of voter registration information, and obstruction of justice. Mr. Small was employed by PinPoint, a company working for the Virginia Republican Party to run local registration drives, and reported to a party headquarters in Harrisonburg.

Mr. Small, of Phoenixville, Pa., had until recently worked for Strategic Allied Consulting, the Arizona company that was fired by the national Republican Party last month after allegations of voter registration improprieties in Colorado, Florida and Nevada. PinPoint, which also has offices in Arizona, had previously been a subcontractor for Strategic Allied Consulting, which is run by a Republican operative, Nathan Sproul.

Mr. Sproul had been under contract with the Republican Party to run registration drives in five states, including Virginia. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement began investigating his operation after state elections officials noticed problems with registration forms including false addresses, registrations filed in the names of dead people and registrations on which party affiliations had been changed.

A spokesman for Strategic Allied Consulting, David Leibowitz, said the company had not been involved in voter registration efforts in Virginia since Sept. 27 and had had no contact with Mr. Small since then. Mr. Small did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

A résumé posted on LinkedIn, which identified Mr. Small as “grass-roots field director” for the Republican National Committee, said he recently graduated from Catholic University in Washington. He was listed as having internships at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and the office of Representative Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican.

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The Republican Party of Virginia, which paid Strategic Allied Consulting $700,000 in August and September, issued a statement after Mr. Small was charged, saying “the actions taken by this individual are a direct contradiction of both his training and explicit instructions given to him.”

The authorities in Harrisonburg, in the Shenandoah Valley, were first alerted to the discarded voter registration forms on Monday by a local retailer named Rob Johnson, who had noticed a man drive behind his store in a black Toyota Camry with Pennsylvania license plates, then throw a white trash bag into the store’s cardboard recycling bin.

Mr. Johnson said he went to move the trash out of the recycling so he would not incur extra charges for it. He became curious because the bag was very lightweight and discovered a manila folder containing the completed voter registration forms.

The voter registration applications were discarded just hours before a deadline — 5 p.m Monday — for submitting them. Elections officials said they made sure the registrations were processed. Virginia does not register voters by party, and it was not clear why the particular registration forms may have been selected for discarding.

Michael Moss contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 20, 2012, on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Aiding G.O.P. Effort In Vote Drive Is Charged. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe